If you use text-to-speech to send intimate messages, to discuss confidential material, or to say things that you don't want anyone to hear, be advised: everything you say to your phone is liable to being listened to later by bored strangers (and that goes double for your Samsung smart TV).

Motherboard's Kaleigh Rogers signed up for Crowdflower, the crowdsourcing service that got Fallenmyst her job, and described the process of listening in on the intimate machine-human interactions of strangers:

Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller told Wir​ed that the company strips personal information from voice recordings before storing it for analysis it within Apple to improve the software. I reached out to both Apple and Samsung but did not hear back by the time this story was published. We will update this story if either company provides a response.

But while it may be within the legal limits of the companies to farm out these short, anonymous voice clips to strangers online, it’s certainly not a well-known practice, explained Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Many Americans would probably be shocked to learn that the contents of what they’re saying is even being transmitted to Apple or Google or Samsung. I think many people probably think that Siri’s only on their phone,” Soghoian told me.

But Soghoian stopped short of calling it an invasion of privacy, telling me that the company’s motivations seem to be to improve their voice recognition software, not to broadcast personal information about its customers. He added that if we want voice recognition software to get better, the companies creating it will need to collect data and, until the software improves, a human will have to listen to that data.

The problem arises when most people dictating at their phone don’t realize that another person might someday listen to it, Soghoian said.

http://boingboing.net/2015/02/27/your-voice-to-text-speech-is-r.html/feed0Lauren Ipsum: The Phantom Tollbooth meets Young Ladies' Illustrated Primerhttp://boingboing.net/2014/12/29/lauren-ipsum-the-phantom-toll.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/12/29/lauren-ipsum-the-phantom-toll.html#commentsMon, 29 Dec 2014 14:42:20 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=355260Lauren Ipsum is an absolutely brilliant kids' book about computer science, and it never mentions computer science—it's a series of witty, charming, and educational parables about the fundamentals that underpin the discipline.]]>
Carlos Bueno's Lauren Ipsum started life as an independent book (which was the subject of a bizarre botwar between a series of Amazon price-bots in 2012), but is now available in a No Starch Press edition.

The story opens with young Lauren running into the woods behind her house after a fight with her mother about whether she's going to summer school. She meets a pack of vicious, yappy dog-creatures who turn out to be wild jargons, and they chase her through the woods until she is thoroughly lost. She meets the wandering salesman, who is trying to figure out how to visit every city in Userland -- the strange kingdom she's run to -- and who offers her some seemingly helpful advice.

Lauren is on her way on a journey through Userland, meeting all sorts of funny people and creatures who pose riddles and challenges that teach everything from composition/decomposition to algorithms, heuristics, brute force and elegant problem solutions, solution- and problem-spaces, recursion, branching searches, and much more. Each one is more charming than the last (there's a generous selection of sample chapters here), and each one is as informative as it is charming.

Filled with wit and wordplay, Lauren Ipsum is a lively and timely introduction to computing fundamentals that wisely avoids mentioning computers altogether. It's still a little beyond my nearly-seven-year-old, but not by much (for example, we had a great time going through the "poetry" section in which Lauren learns to write algorithms), but not for long.

]]>http://boingboing.net/2014/12/29/lauren-ipsum-the-phantom-toll.html/feed0Algorithmic crueltyhttp://boingboing.net/2014/12/24/algorithmic-cruelty.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/12/24/algorithmic-cruelty.html#commentsThu, 25 Dec 2014 06:16:57 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=355276
With its special end-of-year message, Facebook wants to show you, over and over, what your year "looked like"; in Eric Meyer's case, the photo was of his daughter, who died this year: "For those of us who lived through the death of loved ones, or spent extended time in the hospital, or were hit by divorce or losing a job or any one of a hundred crises, we might not want another look at this past year."

To show me Rebecca’s face and say “Here’s what your year looked like!” is jarring.

]]>
With its special end-of-year message, Facebook wants to show you, over and over, what your year "looked like"; in Eric Meyer's case, the photo was of his daughter, who died this year: "For those of us who lived through the death of loved ones, or spent extended time in the hospital, or were hit by divorce or losing a job or any one of a hundred crises, we might not want another look at this past year."

To show me Rebecca’s face and say “Here’s what your year looked like!” is jarring. It feels wrong, and coming from an actual person, it would be wrong. Coming from code, it’s just unfortunate. These are hard, hard problems. It isn’t easy to programmatically figure out if a picture has a ton of Likes because it’s hilarious, astounding, or heartbreaking.

Algorithms are essentially thoughtless. They model certain decision flows, but once you run them, no more thought occurs. To call a person “thoughtless” is usually considered a slight, or an outright insult; and yet, we unleash so many literally thoughtless processes on our users, on our lives, on ourselves.

Where the human aspect fell short, at least with Facebook, was in not providing a way to opt out. The Year in Review ad keeps coming up in my feed, rotating through different fun-and-fabulous backgrounds, as if celebrating a death, and there is no obvious way to stop it. Yes, there’s the drop-down that lets me hide it, but knowing that is practically insider knowledge. How many people don’t know about it? Way more than you think.

http://boingboing.net/2014/12/24/algorithmic-cruelty.html/feed0Algorithmically evolved masks that appear as faces to facial-recognition softwarehttp://boingboing.net/2014/12/22/algorithmically-evolved-masks.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/12/22/algorithmically-evolved-masks.html#commentsMon, 22 Dec 2014 20:00:50 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=354768
Sterling Crispin uses evolutionary algorithms to produce masks that satisfy facial recognition algorithms: "my goal is to show the machine what it’s looking for, to hold a mirror up to the all-seeing eye of the digital-panopticon we live in and let it stare back into its own mind."

This work is an act of political protest by means of bringing transparency to the surveillance and biometric techniques used today.

]]>
Sterling Crispin uses evolutionary algorithms to produce masks that satisfy facial recognition algorithms: "my goal is to show the machine what it’s looking for, to hold a mirror up to the all-seeing eye of the digital-panopticon we live in and let it stare back into its own mind."

This work is an act of political protest by means of bringing transparency to the surveillance and biometric techniques used today. These DATA-MASKS give form to an otherwise invisible network of control and identification systems and make their effect on our identities tangible and visible.

“You can't hit what you can't see, you can't grab what you can't touch. You can't critically engage with technoculture and its infrastructure if you're unable to unravel its threads, run your fingers through the seams, visualize its jurisdiction and weigh its influence on everyday life.” #Stacktivism

Computer systems built to represent human identities have contained with them many ontological assumptions about what it is to be an individual and what personal identity is. These systems define the human as a “what” ie: that which can be measured, not as a “who” ie: our inner self.

If the state of the art in computer science can produce a unique feature that describes an individual as such, what good does that do the individual if this knowledge is only leveraged against them?

If private citizens personal information, social graphs, and communications are being analyzed then the results should be made available to said persons to empower rather than enslave them. This attitude has become popular in personal fitness but not in communications, biometric identity, or social networks.

http://boingboing.net/2014/12/22/algorithmically-evolved-masks.html/feed0Tldrbot: great works of literature in secondshttp://boingboing.net/2014/12/19/tldrbot-great-works-of-litera.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/12/19/tldrbot-great-works-of-litera.html#commentsFri, 19 Dec 2014 10:35:55 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=354460

Tldrbot is the latest bot from Shardcore (previously, previously, previously) that slurps up great novels, algorithmically summarizes them to 1% of their length, then spits out audio files of a synthetic Scottish woman's voice reading those summaries aloud.

]]>

Tldrbot is the latest bot from Shardcore (previously, previously, previously) that slurps up great novels, algorithmically summarizes them to 1% of their length, then spits out audio files of a synthetic Scottish woman's voice reading those summaries aloud.

This bot takes works of literature and algorithmically summarizes them, a chapter at a time, to 1% of their original length. These are then read aloud by the lovely voice of Fiona, a Scottish speech synth, and posted at on Twitter at convenient 3 hour intervals. This way entire works of literature can be consumed in bite-sized algo-chunks, giving you the gist of the book, without any troublesome cause to actually ‘read’ or ‘understand’ it at all…

http://boingboing.net/2014/12/19/tldrbot-great-works-of-litera.html/feed0Sock-puppet- and traffic-analysis-resistant group conversation protocolhttp://boingboing.net/2014/12/17/sock-puppet-and-traffic-analy.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/12/17/sock-puppet-and-traffic-analy.html#commentsThu, 18 Dec 2014 01:00:30 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=354097Dissent implements the Dining Cryptographers and Verifiable Shuffling algorithms to produce a group-conversation system that is resistant to traffic analysis. Feels like we're entering the second golden age of cypherpunk.]]>Dissent implements the Dining Cryptographers and Verifiable Shuffling algorithms to produce a group-conversation system that is resistant to traffic analysis. Feels like we're entering the second golden age of cypherpunk.

Dissent seeks to offer accountable anonymity, giving users strong guarantees of anonymity while also protecting online groups or forums from anonymous abuse such as spam, Sybil attacks, and sockpuppetry. Unlike other systems, Dissent can guarantee that each user of an online forum gets exactly one bandwidth share, one vote, or one pseudonym, which other users can block in the event of misbehavior.

http://boingboing.net/2014/12/16/37k-sentiment-analysis-words-a.html/feed0Extrapolating the backgrounds of famous art with machine learninghttp://boingboing.net/2014/12/11/extrapolating-the-backgrounds.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/12/11/extrapolating-the-backgrounds.html#commentsThu, 11 Dec 2014 18:00:47 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=352763
Yarin Gal's "Extrapolated Art" project uses Photomatch to expand the scenes in classic paintings beyond the boundaries of the canvas -- although it's a spookily convincing effect, it doesn't add much to the art (in most cases, anyway). (via Kottke)
]]>
Yarin Gal's "Extrapolated Art" project uses Photomatch to expand the scenes in classic paintings beyond the boundaries of the canvas -- although it's a spookily convincing effect, it doesn't add much to the art (in most cases, anyway). (via Kottke)
]]>http://boingboing.net/2014/12/11/extrapolating-the-backgrounds.html/feed0Hundreds of vintage games to play in your browserhttp://boingboing.net/2014/11/03/hundreds-of-vintage-games-to-p.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/11/03/hundreds-of-vintage-games-to-p.html#commentsMon, 03 Nov 2014 23:00:41 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=342814
The Internet Archive's Internet Arcade resurrects over 900 classic arcade games from the 1970s to 1990s for play inside your browser, using the JSMAME emulator.]]>
The Internet Archive's Internet Arcade resurrects over 900 classic arcade games from the 1970s to 1990s for play inside your browser, using the JSMAME emulator.

The game collection ranges from early "bronze-age" videogames, with black and white screens and simple sounds, through to large-scale games containing digitized voices, images and music. Most games are playable in some form, although some are useful more for verification of behavior or programming due to the intensity and requirements of their systems.

http://boingboing.net/2014/11/03/hundreds-of-vintage-games-to-p.html/feed0Mercilessly pricking the bubbles of AI, Big Data, machine learninghttp://boingboing.net/2014/10/21/mercilessly-pricking-the-bubbl.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/10/21/mercilessly-pricking-the-bubbl.html#commentsTue, 21 Oct 2014 16:00:16 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=339358
Michael I Jordan is an extremely accomplished computer scientist who is also deeply skeptical of claims made by Big Data advocates as well as people who believe that machine intelligence, AI and machine vision are solved, or nearly so.]]>
Michael I Jordan is an extremely accomplished computer scientist who is also deeply skeptical of claims made by Big Data advocates as well as people who believe that machine intelligence, AI and machine vision are solved, or nearly so.

In a spectacular interview conducted by Lee Gomes (whose work I've admired since he was at the WSJ -- he makes a brief cameo in Makers), Jordan excoriates trendy ideas from the computer science world, offering cogent critiques that are as smart as they are necessary:

Michael Jordan: In a classical database, you have maybe a few thousand people in them. You can think of those as the rows of the database. And the columns would be the features of those people: their age, height, weight, income, et cetera.

Now, the number of combinations of these columns grows exponentially with the number of columns. So if you have many, many columns—and we do in modern databases—you’ll get up into millions and millions of attributes for each person.

Now, if I start allowing myself to look at all of the combinations of these features—if you live in Beijing, and you ride bike to work, and you work in a certain job, and are a certain age—what’s the probability you will have a certain disease or you will like my advertisement? Now I’m getting combinations of millions of attributes, and the number of such combinations is exponential; it gets to be the size of the number of atoms in the universe.

Those are the hypotheses that I’m willing to consider. And for any particular database, I will find some combination of columns that will predict perfectly any outcome, just by chance alone. If I just look at all the people who have a heart attack and compare them to all the people that don’t have a heart attack, and I’m looking for combinations of the columns that predict heart attacks, I will find all kinds of spurious combinations of columns, because there are huge numbers of them.

So it’s like having billions of monkeys typing. One of them will write Shakespeare.

http://boingboing.net/2014/10/21/mercilessly-pricking-the-bubbl.html/feed0If you think you've anonymized a data set, you're probably wronghttp://boingboing.net/2014/10/16/if-you-think-youve-anonymize.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/10/16/if-you-think-youve-anonymize.html#commentsThu, 16 Oct 2014 12:13:52 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=338576
Using some clever computing, Atockar took the NYC Taxicab Dataset and not only calculated the annual income of every hack in New York, but also figured out who goes to strip clubs, what celebrities' home addresses were, and how they tipped.]]>
Using some clever computing, Atockar took the NYC Taxicab Dataset and not only calculated the annual income of every hack in New York, but also figured out who goes to strip clubs, what celebrities' home addresses were, and how they tipped.

In order to do this, I spent some of the most riveting hours of my professional career searching through images of “celebrities in taxis in Manhattan in 2013″ to find enough information to identify the correct record in the database. I had some success – combining the below photos of Bradley Cooper and Jessica Alba with some information from celebrity gossip blogs allowed me to find their trips, which are shown in the accompanying maps.

In Brad Cooper’s case, we now know that his cab took him to Greenwich Village, possibly to have dinner at Melibea, and that he paid $10.50, with no recorded tip. Ironically, he got in the cab to escape the photographers! We also know that Jessica Alba got into her taxi outside her hotel, the Trump SoHo, and somewhat surprisingly also did not add a tip to her $9 fare. Now while this information is relatively benign, particularly a year down the line, I have revealed information that was not previously in the public domain. Considering the speculative drivel that usually accompanies these photos (trust me, I know!), a celebrity journalist would be thrilled to learn this additional information.

http://boingboing.net/2014/10/16/if-you-think-youve-anonymize.html/feed0Sore losers: How casinos went after two guys who found a video poker bughttp://boingboing.net/2014/10/08/sore-losers-how-casinos-went.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/10/08/sore-losers-how-casinos-went.html#commentsWed, 08 Oct 2014 16:00:58 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=336615
John Kane, who'd lost a fortune to Video King machines, discovered a subtle bug that let him win big -- so the casinos put him in handcuffs.]]>
John Kane, who'd lost a fortune to Video King machines, discovered a subtle bug that let him win big -- so the casinos put him in handcuffs.

He brought in an accomplice, another problem gambler named Andre Nestor, but the two fell out over the split. Eventually, the casinos figured out that they were winning too big for chance to account for, and had them arrested on suspicion of theft. Fed prosecutors tried everything to get them to plead guilty -- even charging them with an absurd count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act -- but finally had to let them go.

t turned out the Game King's endless versatility was also its fatal flaw. In addition to different game variants, the machine lets you choose the base level of your wagers: At the low-limit Fremont machines, you could select six different denomination levels, from 1 cent to 50 cents a credit.

The key to the glitch was that under just the right circumstances, you could switch denomination levels retroactively. That meant you could play at 1 cent per credit for hours, losing pocket change, until you finally got a good hand—like four aces or a royal flush. Then you could change to 50 cents a credit and fool the machine into re-awarding your payout at the new, higher denomination.

Performing that trick consistently wasn't easy—it involved a complicated misdirection that left the Game King's internal variables in a state of confusion. But after seven hours rooted to their seats, Kane and Nestor boiled it down to a step-by-step recipe that would work every time.

http://boingboing.net/2014/10/08/sore-losers-how-casinos-went.html/feed0Big Data should not be a faith-based initiativehttp://boingboing.net/2014/07/09/big-data-should-not-be-a-faith.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/07/09/big-data-should-not-be-a-faith.html#commentsWed, 09 Jul 2014 17:49:46 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=317046Cory Doctorow summarizes the problem with the idea that sensitive personal information can be removed responsibly from big data: computer scientists are pretty sure that's impossible.]]>
The debate is a hot one, and a lot of non-technical privacy regulators have been led on by sweet promises from the companies that they regulate about the possibility of creating booming markets in highly sensitive personal data that is somehow neutralized through a magic "de-identification" process that lets information about, say, the personal lives of cancer patients be bought and sold without compromising the patients' privacy.

The most recent example of this is a report by former Ontario privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian and Daniel Castro from the pro-market thinktank the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. The authors argue that the risk of "re-identification" has been grossly exaggerated and that it is indeed possible to produce meaningful, valuable datasets that are effectively "de-identified."

Princeton's Arvind Narayanan and Ed Felten have published a stinging rebuttal, pointing out the massive holes in Cavoukian and Castro's arguments -- cherry picking studies, improperly generalizing, ignoring the existence of multiple re-identification techniques, and so on.

As Narayanan and Felten demonstrate, the Cavoukian/Castro position is grounded in a lack of understanding of both computer science and security research. The "penetrate-and-patch" method they recommend -- where systems are fielded with live data, broken through challenges, and then revised -- has been hugely ineffective in both traditional information security development and in de-identification efforts. And as Narayanan and Felten point out, there is no shortage of computer science experts who could have helped them with this.

Cavoukian and Castro are rightly excited by Big Data and the new ways that scientists are discovering to make use of data collected for one purpose in the service of another. But they do not admit that the same theoretical advances that unlock new meaning in big datasets also unlock new ways of re-identifying the people whose data is collected in the set.

Re-identification is part of the Big Data revolution: among the new meanings we are learning to extract from huge corpuses of data is the identity of the people in that dataset. And since we're commodifying and sharing these huge datasets, they will still be around in ten, twenty and fifty years, when those same Big Data advancements open up new ways of re-identifying -- and harming -- their subjects.

Narayanan and Felten would like to have a "best of both worlds" solution that lets the world reap the benefits of Big Data without compromising the privacy of the subjects of the datasets. But if there is such a solution, it is to be found through rigorous technical examinations, not through hand-waving, wishful thinking, and bad stats.

The faith-based belief in de-identification is at the root of the worst privacy laws in recent memory. In the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation -- the most-lobbied regulatory effort in EU history -- decided to divide data protection into two categories: identifiable data and "de-identified" data, with practically no limits on how the latter could be bought and sold. The mirrors the existing UK approach, which allows companies to unilaterally declare that the data they hold has been "de-identified" and then treat it as a commodity. In both cases, it's a disaster, as I wrote in the Guardian last year. You can't make good technical regulations by ignoring technical experts, even if the thing those technical experts are telling you is that your cherished plans are impossible.

1.
There is no known effective method to anonymize location data, and no evidence that it’s meaningfully achievable.

2.
Computing re-identification probabilities based on proof-of-concept demonstrations is silly.

3.
Cavoukian and Castro ignore many realistic threats by focusing narrowly on a particular model of re-identification.

4.
Cavoukian and Castro concede that de-identification is inadequate for high-dimensional data. But nowadays most interesting datasets are high-dimensional.

5.
Penetrate-and-patch is not an option.

6.
Computer science knowledge is relevant and highly available.

7.
Cavoukian and Castro apply different standards to big data and re-identification techniques.

8.
Quantification of re-identification probabilities, which permeates Cavoukian and Castro’s arguments, is a fundamentally meaningless exercise.

-Cory Doctorow

]]>http://boingboing.net/2014/07/09/big-data-should-not-be-a-faith.html/feed0What "open learning" looks like when it's for kids who need it mosthttp://boingboing.net/2014/07/07/what-open-learning-looks-l.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/07/07/what-open-learning-looks-l.html#commentsMon, 07 Jul 2014 13:55:43 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=316333Mimi Ito.
]]>
When you're a kid whose main point of access to the net is your mom's smartphone, and your only broadband is at your school or library, it's tough to make it through a series of Kahn Academy videos or a Udacity course on your own to become an awesome coder. And, you probably don't have coder friends or much as far as school offerings in the digital arts or programming in these days of dwindling school budgets. It's no wonder we've seen declining numbers of non-Asian minorities and women in the tech sector, despite the corporate push for a more diverse workforce.

A group of educators (who I'm proud to be associated with) have set off to change this. This summer, the newly launched Connected Learning Alliance (CLA) has teamed up with the Scratch team at the MIT Media Lab and photographer Jonathan Worth to develop a set of summer programs in the digital arts, targeted at kids who wouldn't otherwise have access to this kind of summer learning. The class is being hosted by Pursuitery, where students can earn digital badges and take part in weekly contests for the next eight weeks.

This week, participants in Phonar Nation are out taking pictures that "flatten the world." In other words, they're using phones, iPods and other devices with cameras to shoot images close-up, with shutter blur and depth of field and they're freezing action, as they learn to become storytellers. This is one of five lessons with the ultimate goal of teaching students to communicate messages with their photographs. The best part of the class is that anyone can take it at any time. You don't even need to do the lessons in order.

Pursuitery also is offering a free coding class, Coding with Scratch. The online classes represent the best in open educational offerings in the digital arts. These programs demonstrate the commitment of the CLA to ensure that all young people have access to top-notch summer learning experiences where they are exploring interests, connecting with inspiring mentors, and gaining valuable skills and expertise.

The sessions have been running for several weeks now, and will repeat again later this month. Pursuitery's summer offerings are part of this year's Cities of Learning initiative. A number of cities nationwide are involved, offering myriad free courses. In Los Angeles, Pursuitery's courses — in addition to being offered online — are being taught at a couple of inner-city libraries, where kids are using the library computers and iPods to do the lessons. The library involvement has been crucial for CLA's mission — to reach all learners, regardless of their economic status. Everyone is invited to participate, whether they are connecting through libraries, schools, after-school clubs or in wired homes.

Los Angeles-based librarian Celia Avila describes the prior challenges she faced, offering coding programs to her kids: "We had similar classes taught by Whiz Girls using Code Pen, which led us to try Code Academy classes with some teens. The students who participated lost interest due to lack of an on-site instructor and lack of access to the technology at home." In her third week of Pursuitery sessions in Scratch and Phonar Nation, she has seen kids engaged and coming back, with new kids popping their head in the door to try out the program.

True "disruption" and access beyond the echo chamber of the digital elites requires more than creating sophisticated educational content and building high-end online learning platforms. We need to spend less effort escalating the tech and bandwidth intensiveness of these platforms and more on meeting diverse kids where they are in their local communities with the resources they have on hand.

-Mimi Ito

Promotional video created by 10-year-old Sophia Serrato

(Images: Photos by Luna Ito-Fisher, CC-BY: Siblings Angel Alonso, foreground, and Lupe Alonso, left, take part in a Coding with Scratch class at the Junipero Serra Branch Library in Los Angeles; Two Phonar Nation citizens, Shay and Deja Dumas, take part in a photography lesson using their mobile devices)]]>

http://boingboing.net/2014/07/07/what-open-learning-looks-l.html/feed0Supercomputing center in a beautiful, deconsecrated churchhttp://boingboing.net/2014/07/01/supercomputing-center-in-a-bea.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/07/01/supercomputing-center-in-a-bea.html#commentsTue, 01 Jul 2014 22:00:44 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=315317
Allison writes, "The Barcelona Supercomputing Center is not only gorgeous with its soaring ceilings, it also was an instrumental site for developing modern microchip technology."

Since 2005 the former church has been home to MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe that was instrumental in developing modern microchip technology.

]]>
Allison writes, "The Barcelona Supercomputing Center is not only gorgeous with its soaring ceilings, it also was an instrumental site for developing modern microchip technology."

Since 2005 the former church has been home to MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe that was instrumental in developing modern microchip technology. The giant machine is used to calculate the massively complex calculations involved in such fields of research as human genome mapping, astrophysics, and weather prediction. Physically the computer consists of a number of black computing stacks that are all encased in a giant glass box, which itself sits in the romantically-styled main hall of Torre Girona.

Rebuilt after the Spanish Civil War, the Torre Girona is a 19th century church that sits on the campus of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. The space was actually in use as a Catholic church until at least until 1960, but was since deconsecrated and used for more functional purposes until finally being inhabited in full by the supercomputer and its attendant offices.

http://boingboing.net/2014/07/01/supercomputing-center-in-a-bea.html/feed0Chatbot attains milestone at annual Turing Test competitionhttp://boingboing.net/2014/06/09/chatbot-attains-milestone-at-a.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/06/09/chatbot-attains-milestone-at-a.html#commentsMon, 09 Jun 2014 22:00:14 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=309707Eugene Goostman, a program simulating a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy, has attained a 33% success rate at the annual RSA Turing Test competition, meaning that a third of the judges were fooled into thinking that the chatbot was actually a human being.]]>Eugene Goostman, a program simulating a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy, has attained a 33% success rate at the annual RSA Turing Test competition, meaning that a third of the judges were fooled into thinking that the chatbot was actually a human being. Alan Turing's iconic test was meant to cut through the existentialist crisis in artificial intelligence about what was or wasn't "intelligence" by proposing that if a human being could not distinguish between a person and code in a blind test, the code was intelligent by human standards.

The Goostman bot enjoyed the advantage of simulating someone whose first language wasn't English, and whose apparent young age could explain a lack of nuanced reasoning and basic knowledge, so you could think of this as kind of a cheat, but it's still a very impressive feat.

Eugene Goostman, a computer programme made by a team based in Russia, succeeded in a test conducted at the Royal Society in London. It convinced 33 per cent of the judges that it was human, said academics at the University of Reading, which organised the test.

It is thought to be the first computer to pass the iconic test. Though other programmes have claimed successes, those included set topics or questions in advance.

A version of the computer programme, which was created in 2001, is hosted online for anyone talk to. (“I feel about beating the turing test in quite convenient way. Nothing original,” said Goostman, when asked how he felt after his success.)

Because raycasters are so fast and simple, you can try lots of ideas quickly. You could make a dungeon crawler, first-person shooter, or a grand-theft-auto style sandbox. Hell, the constant-time makes me want to build an oldschool MMORPG with a massive, procedurally generated world. Here are a few challenges to get you started:

*
Immersion. This example is begging for full-screen mouse-lock with a rainy background and thunderclaps synchronized to the lightning.

*
An indoors level. Replace the skybox with a symmetric gradient or, if you're feeling plucky, try rendering floor and ceiling tiles (think of it this way: they're just the spaces between the walls you're already drawing!)

*
Lighting objects. We already have a fairly robust lighting model. Why not place lights in the world and compute wall lighting based on them? Lights are 80% of atmosphere.

*
Good touch events. I've hacked in a couple of basic touch controls so folks on phones and tablets can try out the demo, but there's huge room for improvement.

*
Camera effects. For example, zooming, blurring, drunk mode, etc. With a raycaster this are surprisingly simple. Start by modifying camera.fov in the console.

Jenise sez, "When I worked for a robotics company, I complained bitterly about the lack of robotic toys for my daughter to my boss, Mitch Rosenberg.

]]>

Jenise sez, "When I worked for a robotics company, I complained bitterly about the lack of robotic toys for my daughter to my boss, Mitch Rosenberg. Yesterday, he sent me an email with the answer to my problem: KIBO, a robot kit specifically designed for kids age 4-7. Mitch partnered with Marina Umaschi Bers, co-creator of Scratch Jr., to found KinderLab Robotics, Inc., and they're trying to produce the toy I dreamed of for my daughter."

Looks amazing, but it ain't cheap: $219 minimum to get the actual blocks, $349 for the full set.

Sez Mitch, "Young children learn by doing. Children build their own robot with KIBO,
program it to do what they want, and decorate it. KIBO gives children the chance to make their ideas physical and tangible -- exactly what their young minds and bodies need. And KIBO does all this without requiring screen time from PCs, tablets or smartphones.
"Kinderlab Robotics needs to raise money to equip a manufacturing facility plus seed inventory for its first commercial-scale production run, and the fundraising is being done with this Kickstarter campaign."

Alas, my daughter is now seven and has moved on to LEGO WeDo and Minecraft, but for all of you out there with young robot enthusiasts, this is the programming toy you've been waiting for.

http://boingboing.net/2014/06/03/kickstarting-kibo-robot-block.html/feed0Logic gates made from pulleys and weightshttp://boingboing.net/2014/06/02/logic-gates-made-from-pulleys.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/06/02/logic-gates-made-from-pulleys.html#commentsMon, 02 Jun 2014 17:00:50 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=307744
Alex Gorischek's Pulley Logic Gates is a brilliant and delightful demonstration of attaining a set of logic gates with pulleys, weights and string, using materials you can buy cheaply so you can try it out yourself. Watch this video: the gates build in complexity and ingenuity as they go along, and by XOR, I was actually cheering (and it gets even better than XOR!).
(Via JWZ)
]]>

Alex Gorischek's Pulley Logic Gates is a brilliant and delightful demonstration of attaining a set of logic gates with pulleys, weights and string, using materials you can buy cheaply so you can try it out yourself. Watch this video: the gates build in complexity and ingenuity as they go along, and by XOR, I was actually cheering (and it gets even better than XOR!).
(Via JWZ)
]]>

http://boingboing.net/2014/06/02/logic-gates-made-from-pulleys.html/feed0Design as parameterization: brute-forcing the manufacturing/ design problem-spacehttp://boingboing.net/2014/05/20/design-as-paramterization-bru.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/05/20/design-as-paramterization-bru.html#commentsTue, 20 May 2014 20:00:32 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=304250
Here's something exciting: Autodesk's new computer-aided design software lets the designer specify the parameters of a solid (its volume, dimensions, physical strength, even the tools to be used in its manufacture and the amount of waste permissible in the process) and the software iterates through millions of potential designs that fit.]]>
Here's something exciting: Autodesk's new computer-aided design software lets the designer specify the parameters of a solid (its volume, dimensions, physical strength, even the tools to be used in its manufacture and the amount of waste permissible in the process) and the software iterates through millions of potential designs that fit. The designer's job becomes tweaking the parameters and choosing from among the brute-forced problem-space of her object, rather than designing it from scratch.

If designers were able to keep the development process digital, as software developers can, the process could run faster — no need to constantly translate between digital and physical — and parts of it could be automated and optimized.

Autodesk’s automated design software works through three layers. Generators populate physical space with matter, creating thousands of design suggestions in a split-second. Analyzers test each design against constraints developed by the designer: does it fit in the desired shape? Does it satisfy strength, thermal, material, and mechanical requirements? Above those, an optimization system finds the best designs, returns them to the starting point, and refines them repeatedly. “What we’re offering is to use the computer as a way to explore options,” says Kowalski. “It’s getting us closer to the optimal designs, the ones we wish we had.”

That optimization engine can go all the way down to individual toolpaths in the manufacturing process, thanks to closer linkages between software and industrial tools, so a designer might ask the software to minimize waste or balance cost against environmental impact from materials.

If you're anything like me, the results of this simple algorithm leave you itching to go build an online Terragen, a jetpack-based first person shooter, fishing simulator, MMORPG, etc. This single-cube, canvas-projected demo practically begs for extension.

Here are a few things I challenge you to try:

*
WebGL rendering

*
Variation by height, where lower altitudes are smoother (like sand) and higher altitudes are more rocky

Wagner James Au writes, "Openworm, the open source collaborative project to construct an artificial life form from the cellular level, now has a Kickstarter so supporters can back the project and also get a copy of the worm itself, Wormsim, to put on their browser and even tweak the code.

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Wagner James Au writes, "Openworm, the open source collaborative project to construct an artificial life form from the cellular level, now has a Kickstarter so supporters can back the project and also get a copy of the worm itself, Wormsim, to put on their browser and even tweak the code. Here's some background from the project coordinator, who I also ask if this Kickstarter is, you know, contributing to the ultimate creation of a completely artificial sentient life form that will turn against humankind and enslave our children.

They're mostly raising money for core engineering, with the balance going to administration and educational outreach. The code is all MIT-licensed free/open source software.

OpenWorm is an open science project aimed at building a digital organism, a microscopic worm called C. elegans. With this KickStarter we want you to join us in contributing to the creation of the first digital organism and we want to give you your own "WormSim" to play with on your web browser. Your WormSim will improve over time and will get smarter as our model gets better and closer to the real one.

We are also creating the OpenWorm Academy to teach you all about how this tiny worm works and what goes in to creating a digital organism in an easy to understand online course.

http://boingboing.net/2014/04/25/kickstarting-openworm-a-cellu.html/feed0Why I don't believe in robotshttp://boingboing.net/2014/04/02/why-i-dont-believe-in-robots.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/04/02/why-i-dont-believe-in-robots.html#commentsWed, 02 Apr 2014 14:00:54 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=295821
My new Guardian column is "Why it is not possible to regulate robots," which discusses where and how robots can be regulated, and whether there is any sensible ground for "robot law" as distinct from "computer law."

One thing that is glaringly absent from both the Heinleinian and Asimovian brain is the idea of software as an immaterial, infinitely reproducible nugget at the core of the system.

]]>
My new Guardian column is "Why it is not possible to regulate robots," which discusses where and how robots can be regulated, and whether there is any sensible ground for "robot law" as distinct from "computer law."

One thing that is glaringly absent from both the Heinleinian and Asimovian brain is the idea of software as an immaterial, infinitely reproducible nugget at the core of the system. Here, in the second decade of the 21st century, it seems to me that the most important fact about a robot – whether it is self-aware or merely autonomous – is the operating system, configuration, and code running on it.

If you accept that robots are just machines – no different in principle from sewing machines, cars, or shotguns – and that the thing that makes them "robot" is the software that runs on a general-purpose computer that controls them, then all the legislative and regulatory and normative problems of robots start to become a subset of the problems of networks and computers.

If you're a regular reader, you'll know that I believe two things about computers: first, that they are the most significant functional element of most modern artifacts, from cars to houses to hearing aids; and second, that we have dramatically failed to come to grips with this fact. We keep talking about whether 3D printers should be "allowed" to print guns, or whether computers should be "allowed" to make infringing copies, or whether your iPhone should be "allowed" to run software that Apple hasn't approved and put in its App Store.

Practically speaking, though, these all amount to the same question: how do we keep computers from executing certain instructions, even if the people who own those computers want to execute them? And the practical answer is, we can't.

http://boingboing.net/2014/04/02/why-i-dont-believe-in-robots.html/feed01:1 scale model of Manhattan in Minecrafthttp://boingboing.net/2014/03/05/11-scale-model-of-manhattan-i.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/03/05/11-scale-model-of-manhattan-i.html#commentsWed, 05 Mar 2014 23:00:34 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=290530
Christopher Mitchell, a PhD candidate in NYU's Computer Science program, is building a 1:1 scale model of Manhattan in Minecraft, with faithful, handmade reproductions of each of the island's skyscrapers.]]>
Christopher Mitchell, a PhD candidate in NYU's Computer Science program, is building a 1:1 scale model of Manhattan in Minecraft, with faithful, handmade reproductions of each of the island's skyscrapers. He's relying on data from diverse sources, including Google Earth, and the model to date is 277m^2, with 71Bm^3 of volumetric detail, running on a 200 core cluster with 200GB of RAM. It's part of a larger project (!), called Sparseworld, through which Mitchell is combining data from diverse geographical and architectural systems to faithfully model the physical world.

Where to get replicable data for every building in New York City? "Completion is reliant on getting models for every building on every street, and to my knowledge, only Google has that much information," Mitchell said of Google's Earth and Maps combination of products. Here.com, which used to be Nokia Ovi Maps, and Microsoft's Bing are other possible sources.

"Dad's favorite pastime shouldn't treat girls like second-class citizens."
The problem is that these companies' data is under license and encrypted, which Mitchell doesn't want to mess with under the table. "I've considered reverse-engineering the encrypted format that Google Earth uses to fetch building models from the server and just keep the building models to myself," Mitchell said, but he still worries about violating the Google Earth license. He's had trouble getting in touch with the right people at Google to discuss accessing the data and using it for the academic pursuit of a Minecraft Manhattan. He has also reached out to the Here.com and Bing team

http://boingboing.net/2014/03/05/11-scale-model-of-manhattan-i.html/feed0Data-compression with playing cardshttp://boingboing.net/2014/03/04/data-compression-with-playing.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/03/04/data-compression-with-playing.html#commentsTue, 04 Mar 2014 23:00:14 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=290332
Tim sends us, "A way of encoding binary numbers into playing cards that I thought up. It usually allows many more bits than there are cards.]]>
Tim sends us, "A way of encoding binary numbers into playing cards that I thought up. It usually allows many more bits than there are cards. The method can also store binary encoded letters of the English alphabet at less than 2 cards per letter on average, and has a theoretical ability to do less than 1 card per letter."

Tim isn't sure if his method of data-compression is novel or not, and neither am I. If you know of related work, please add it in the comments.

The method treats cards as representing a 1 or 0. Its ability to store more data than just 52 bits comes from the way that cards which can have their position deduced by examining the rest of the pack can be taken out and reused to encode more data.

The data in the cards can also be encrypted to the level of a one-time pad.

I don't know if the method is any use outside of being an interesting mathematical puzzle. It's fairly simple, but I haven't heard of the method anywhere else so I'd be interested to know if I'm the first person to think of it. If not I'd love to know who else has thought of it.

http://boingboing.net/2014/03/04/data-compression-with-playing.html/feed0Trustycon: how to redesign NSA surveillance to catch more criminals and spy on a lot fewer peoplehttp://boingboing.net/2014/03/01/trustycon-how-to-redesign-nsa.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/03/01/trustycon-how-to-redesign-nsa.html#commentsSun, 02 Mar 2014 04:00:05 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=290023
The Trustycon folks have uploaded over seven hours' worth of talks from their event, an alternative to the RSA security conference founded by speakers who quit over RSA's collusion with the NSA.]]>

The Trustycon folks have uploaded over seven hours' worth of talks from their event, an alternative to the RSA security conference founded by speakers who quit over RSA's collusion with the NSA. I've just watched Ed Felten's talk on "Redesigning NSA Programs to Protect Privacy" (starts at 6:32:33), an absolutely brilliant talk that blends a lucid discussion of statistics with practical computer science with crimefighting, all within a framework of respect for privacy, liberty and the US Bill of Rights.

Felten's talk lays out how the NSA's mass-collection program works, what its theoretical basis is for finding terrorists in all that data, and then explains how this is an incredibly inefficient and risky and expensive way of actually fighting crime. Then he goes on to propose an elegant alternative that gets better intelligence while massively reducing the degree of surveillance and the risk of disclosure.

I'm using Vid to MP3 to convert the whole seven hours' worth of talks to audio and plan on listening to them over the next couple of days.

Update:Here's that MP3 -- it's about 1GB. Thanks to the Internet Archive for hosting it!

http://boingboing.net/2014/03/01/trustycon-how-to-redesign-nsa.html/feed0Army won't answer Freedom of Information Request on its SGT STAR AI chatbothttp://boingboing.net/2014/02/01/army-wont-answer-freedom-of.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/02/01/army-wont-answer-freedom-of.html#commentsSat, 01 Feb 2014 14:00:24 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=284513
Dave from the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes, "Seven years ago, the U.S. Army launched the SGT STAR program, which uses a virtual recruiter (an AI chatbot) to talk to potential soldiers.]]>
Dave from the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes, "Seven years ago, the U.S. Army launched the SGT STAR program, which uses a virtual recruiter (an AI chatbot) to talk to potential soldiers. We put in a FOIA request for a bunch of documents related to the program, including current and historical input/output scripts. So far, the Army Research and Marketing Group--which is supposed to help with transparency--hasn't responded."

We contacted programmer Bruce Wilcox, two-time winner of the Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence (a.k.a. “The First Turing Test”) for advice on what to ask for in a FOIA request. Wilcox suggested we seek Sgt. Star’s input patterns (all the phrases and keywords Sgt. Star is pre-programmed to recognize) and the scripted output answers (all the possible things Sgt. Star could say). In our FOIA letter, we requested these files as they existed for each year between 2007 and 2013, so we could compare how Sgt. Star’s answers evolved to reflect developments in global conflicts, changes to military benefit packages, and new policies, such as the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

To cover our bases, we widened the FOIA request to include all contracts regarding Sgt. Star, all annual and quarterly reports that reference Sgt. Star, any audits, and any privacy policies associated with the program. We also asked for whatever analytical data might be available, such as the number of conversations Sgt. Star has had, the duration of those conversations, the general geolocation of the users (broadly), the number of conversations that resulted in direct communication with a human recruiter and any estimate of manpower saved by using the AI.

Once we crafted the request, the next challenge was to determine which agency was responsible for Sgt. Star. With the disestablishment of the Accession Command in September 2012, it was unclear which division had inherited Sgt. Star. We started with the public affairs office of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) in Fort Knox, KY. From there, our request bounced to the Army Marketing and Research Group, a new division created in October 2012. A representative initially said they would follow-up in a week and get us whatever they could. That was last November and we have yet to receive any further response, despite a follow-up letter we filed shortly after the Army missed the 20-day FOIA response deadline. We even sent the Army a note that we were writing this blog post.

http://boingboing.net/2014/02/01/army-wont-answer-freedom-of.html/feed0Detailed timeline of the Bletchley Park messhttp://boingboing.net/2014/01/29/detailed-timeline-of-the-bletc.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/01/29/detailed-timeline-of-the-bletc.html#commentsThu, 30 Jan 2014 05:00:01 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=283716published a detailed timeline of the two institutions, showing how they got into the current (and disgraceful) situation. Halfacree's article includes some very sensible recommendations to both trusts.]]>published a detailed timeline of the two institutions, showing how they got into the current (and disgraceful) situation. Halfacree's article includes some very sensible recommendations to both trusts.
]]>http://boingboing.net/2014/01/29/detailed-timeline-of-the-bletc.html/feed0Bletchley Park's new management chucks out long-term volunteershttp://boingboing.net/2014/01/26/bletchley-parks-new-manageme.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/01/26/bletchley-parks-new-manageme.html#commentsMon, 27 Jan 2014 04:00:24 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=282999YouTube

Here's more bad news from historic computing site Bletchley Park, where a new, slick museum is being put together with enormous corporate and state funding.

Here's more bad news from historic computing site Bletchley Park, where a new, slick museum is being put together with enormous corporate and state funding. Last month, it was the fact that McAfee had apparently banned any mention of Edward Snowden in a cybersecurity exhibit.

Now there's this heartrending BBC report on how volunteers who've given decades of service to Bletchley have been summarily dismissed because they don't fit in with the new plan. The museum of Churchill memoribilia that shared the Bletchley site has been evicted.

For people like me who've donated over the years, fundraised for it, and joined the Friends of Bletchley, this is really distressing news. I've always dreamt of Bletchley getting enough funding to do the site and its collection justice, but if it comes at the expense of decency and integrity, they may as well have left it as Churchill did -- abandoned and forgotten.

Update: Bletchley Trust has clarified to me that while this volunteer was dismissed from guiding tours because he refused to conduct the tour to the new spec, he still volunteers with the Trust in its educational department.

http://boingboing.net/2014/01/26/bletchley-parks-new-manageme.html/feed0Face-substitution in-browser with Javascripthttp://boingboing.net/2014/01/23/face-substitution-in-browser-w.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/01/23/face-substitution-in-browser-w.html#commentsFri, 24 Jan 2014 04:00:32 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=282289
Auduno's Face substitution webtoy uses Javascript libraries to map your face using your computer's webcam and overlay it with the faces of celebrities from Bill Murray to Justin Bieber to Rihanna to the Mona Lisa.]]>
Auduno's Face substitution webtoy uses Javascript libraries to map your face using your computer's webcam and overlay it with the faces of celebrities from Bill Murray to Justin Bieber to Rihanna to the Mona Lisa. It's an impressive example of cross-platform, in-browser application development, and suggests some pretty cool stuff on the horizon for Web-native apps. The sourcecode is on Github for your forking pleasure.